Fortunately, most of my friends were poor BEFORE the recession too, so we haven't had to adjust too much. :P

On the upside, I've saved money by going out to cheaper places with my salary-reduced friends. Before the recession, we never would have gone to those places let along brown bag it for lunch in the park. And I've also become closer to the people who can still afford to eat out in nicer places.

I've never ditched a friend because they were poorer or wealthier than I am. If one of my friends is having economic trouble I help them as best as I can and they do the same

"Like a hurricane... One house might get turned into splinters, while another is left untouched."

I think you're thinking of tornadoes.

I've been ditched due to different economic status but in my eyes that is much better since they did that....they are not really a good friend anyway. Saved me some trouble.

@GMFish: happens with Hurricanes as well: [www.makefive.com]

Honestly don't know anybody personally who's gotten hit by this recession.

Seems like everybody is in some sort of recession proof job. Kinda crazy.

Well, when you're pretty new to the workforce (new to 3 years), every step is a struggle just to make it to a better job, to keep moving up in life...so me and Mr. Pi, and our friends aren't poor, but we were kind of living paycheck to paycheck, and trying to build our savings, all before the economy went south, so we haven't really felt a huge crushing blow or anything. Sure, unemployment hit us hard, but we had a decent cushion by that point.

I think it really worked in our favor that we (us and our friends) were in the same boat, or at least we were living modestly even if we could afford to live more extravagantly. So we know the worth of a dollar, and we can commiserate and understand each others' problems even if we're not facing the same ones ourselves.

The type of friend that bails out on you because of money issues isn't really the type of friend you want anyway.

When my sister and I would argue as kids, her last resort jab at me was calling out the limited number of friends I have, claiming that her popularity was better than my small close circle, and in High School it seems that way. Amazingly I still have all of those same close friends and she doesn't keep in contact with any of her HS crowd. Funny

@pecan 3.14159265: Not nitpicking, but how can one live paycheck to paycheck and not be hit by a pay cut? Also, how can THOSE twp be true and still build savings?

(Unless you are like me and the paycheck to paycheck means you stash away fixed amount of savings, and they count as "expenses" and you are left with very little leeway for other stuff.)

I would never ditch a friend for being richer or poorer than me, but I have had to start hanging out with one friend a lot less since I have been indirectly affected by the recession. She has close to six figures of disposable income and can't even comprehend what cutting back means.

Any notable difference in status that's painful to one party or the other has the potential to break up friendships -- not just money woes. I have a friend who foster-parents and both her kids are going back to their (HORRIFIC) birth parents this month. It's really hard for her right now because EVERYONE WE KNOW is pregnant, and it reminds her of what she can't have ... and this month, it's just too painful b/c she's losing her kids.

If you changed jobs on purpose, or quit, that's one thing. But the emotional component of job loss makes it too hard for some people, I think.

@GMFish: lol, that was my thought too.

@Trae: we are in the same boat

I just try not to use C-Notes to light cigars in front of them, just as they try not to let their rumbling stomach make too much noise.

When I was in college, I was working 20 to 30 hours a week and paying my rent, buying my books, etc. I had absolutely no margin for error and even breaking a jar of tomato sauce and having to get a new one could throw off my budget for a week.

Most of my friends, however, had their bills paid by their parents. My housemates were cognizant of this difference and we all simply adapted, but one friend -- who lived with his well-off parents and had recently been given a new-model car -- wanted everyone to go to Foxwoods for his 21st birthday. We were sitting down at lunch together, a group of eight or ten of us, when he quipped, "But of course [Etoiles] isn't interested! She doesn't have any money."

I walked out of lunch without saying a word. A few days later I explained to him why it had been so incredibly hurtful and why it was a stupid thing to say, and he acknowledged it, and apologized, but the friendship never really went back to where it had been. And in part, it was because he was right: everyone else went to Foxwoods, went to other events, and I went to work, or stayed home watching DVDs.

The friendships that relied on money never did recover, and eventually dwindled away, and it really sucked at the time. But these 6 years out? I don't really miss them. The friends who were willing to come over, chill on the couch, and bake cookies? Those are the friends who I'm still close enough to that I want them at my wedding.

And that's the kind of thing I start to see happening now. Yes, a friend and I can still go out, but we go at happy hour, for the $3 sangria, and just have one each before we go keep talking somewhere cheaper. Why? Because it's the time we spend together that we both value, not the price of the food and drinks.

Meh. People from different socio-economic strata don't typically become close friends anyway. Read Paul Fussell's book, "Class." He argues that class distinctions are not really based on the amount of money you have; id est, a proletarian can become rich, but he'll remain a proletarian, and an upper-class person can have a reversal of fortune, but he's still upper-class. So the emphasis is on the socio, rather than the economic, though their are ties to both.

The thing is, I've experienced this plenty. I was born into the middle class and on the few occasions I've rubbed elbows with the uppers, they act really awkward around me because they assume I'll somehow be jealous or weird about their money and privilege. Ask an upper-class person where they went to college, and they'll say "New Jersey" instead of "Princeton."

If the economic status of friends is changed by the economy, their social status still remains effectively intact. You remain in whatever class you're born in regardless of finances. If you find your relationships with now-poorer friends are strained, well, I have to agree with pb5000, you don't want them as friends.

I have never had a "lot" of friends. Maybe 5 or 6 at one point.

I have been on both ends of this dynamic, and while the other people and I never really *stopped* being friends we just stopped seeing each other either deliberately or coincidentally due to mutual discomfort.

I don't think it's so much that people "bail" on friends of disparate financial means. In my experience it's a mutual parting. The well off friend often doesn't want to adjust their life style downward when the less well off person is around. The less well off friend doesn't want to feel like, or be seen as a "mooch" and so starts declining to attend mutual events when they know they cannot pay their own way. They mutually grow distant, and eventually just stop contacting each other.

I have 2 or 3 friends that have continued to be close to me over any distance, and through all of our but differently timed financial hardships. They are the true friends that I will do anything for. I'd take a bullet for any of those 3 people.

@MostlyHarmless: Well, paycheck to paycheck for us means that we pay our bills, have our fun, and sock away money for savings. We spent less than we made and we sustained a bout of unemployment only because only one of us was unemployed and we had savings to cushion us in case we had to go for a long period of time with only one income.

To me, paycheck to paycheck is being fully aware of how much is going into the bank and how much is coming out. I know how much I get paid every month, and I know what taxes are being taken out, and how much insurance costs. We have to know these things because we have to continue to build upward even if we face having only one income for a while.

We're back at two now, thank goodness.

@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): Big life changes often wreck friendships, I've observed, and not because anyone gets malicious -- because they mean well but don't know what to do. It's very common with a death in the family. You don't know how to say, "I'm so sorry," so you say nothing at all. And then that stretches out into a much longer silence. Then you end up staying silent because you feel kind of bad about having been out of touch. And then, two years later, no-one remembers how to start the conversation again...

@Etoiles: My fondest experiences with my friends have been all of us sitting around the living room, talking about what's going on in our lives, watching movies, playing board games and eating chips and dip or cookies. You're right, it's the experience that counts, whether it's sitting at a fancy restaurant or in someone's living room.

@Skankingmike: I've got some friends in a neighboring state that have been affected - but my friends here are all doing okay.

@pecan 3.14159265: Glad your circumstances have gotten better! I think most people's version of "paycheck to paycheck," though, means "completely cleaned out between paychecks with no cushion." I get where you're differentiating, though--I'm not a splashy spender, but there's a difference between the times when I can shop for groceries and assume I'll have enough for what I want and the times when I plan the list according to the money I've allotted.

Just had a friend get very angry because I can't go to her daughter's wedding:
3 hour drive each way (so about $40 in gas)
$200 hotel room (one night at a swanky winery in the middle of nowhere so no other options)
Parking fees & tips
$150 wedding gift (have to "pay for your dinner")
Another $100 or so for dress/shoes.

I couldn't justify dropping an entire paycheck on one weekend.

She, however, found it easy to justify dropping me as a friend.

@edwardso: me too. Hell, we're ridin' dolphins, doin' flips and shit.

@Etoiles: Though some of those are big positive changes, too; there's just a tendency to share more time with people with whom we have life experiences in common. That's why friends are likelier to be closer to our own age than decades away from it. I don't think that's evil, and I think that's part of what happens with the economic thing, but I also think that that one's particularly worth trying to surmount, especially since it's often just embarrassment on either side that's getting in the way. That's a hell of a thing to lose a friendship for.

If you don't value friendship enough to either adjust your plans downward or to pick up the difference, you deserve to die alone and unmissed.

@GMFish: Or mortgage foreclosures.

@pb5000: There's a Thai concept of Eating Friends. People charming enough to spend a lunch (say) with - and a great lunch - but little more. Not a good or bad thing, simply a description.
It sounds like your sister was either unfamiliar with the concept or let her ratio of Eating to Real Friends slide out of whack. And yup, in those cases, what happened to her is the peril of letting these things getting out of balance.

I knew a couple who really were literally, hanging by a thread, because he was the only one working (she apparently was too good for a job) and they were both saddled with debt. It was a terrible situation, but they brought it upon themselves. They had absolutely no savings or disposable income of any kind, so it made it really, really hard for any of our friends to hang out with them because they could never go anywhere and there were some other personality issues as well..I'll get to that.

Even if we wanted to go mini golfing, and it was $6 a person, they couldn't do it. And because their lives were so focused on money, and not having it, inevitably any conversation would always end up going back to how much money they were or were not making, how much money they had, what they couldn't afford, or could afford...it got tedious. I don't like people whose sole reason for existing is to discuss how much money they have, or what kind of stuff they've purchased with their money.

I think more than the money, it was their personalities - they became so consumed with not having any money, and their ultimate goal of obtaining money (even if it was just to get by and have savings), that we couldn't deal with being around them anymore. We could have had a great time just sitting around and talking, but the conversation would always take a turn toward their money situation, and none of us enjoyed that. Money can change people, just like not having money can change people.

@thesadtomato: So, Trading Places was a lie? I love that movie.

@thesadtomato: The college thing is just an established convention, though. That's not so much a rich thing as an academic "We don't use our doctorates socially" thing. (Both of which are rather disappearing these days.)

I also think that class is a bit of a red herring in this discussion; I don't think anybody's feeling that a lost job turned them or their friends into a gritty prole who couldn't relate to the middle class. It's the change in life pattern, not class, that's causing the most difficulty for people. It's finding a way to do something together when your friendship was made possible by you both being able to afford gas money and a lunch out, and both of you having the time to do it. It illustrates just how much friendship is enabled by these concrete similarities and benefits, and how much of a challenge it can be to retain it when those similarities disappear.

@TimeToChange2000: If you have to pay for your own dinner, it's not a wedding worth going to anyway. It sounds like (no offense to your friend) that everyone involved with the wedding itself is being cheap.

Dinner at my wedding was about $110 a plate. We wanted delicious food, we paid for delicious food. And we purposely made our wedding alcohol free because it was extremely expensive. If anyone was going to throw a fit because they had to pay for their own wine, we didn't care - but we would never make anyone pay for their own meals at our wedding.

Ugh, I hear you! I just had to turn down a restaurant-based birthday party. I can't afford to pay for my fancy meal and the meals/drinks of those around me, sorry!

The barter system. I provide tech support and babysitting services and in return they feed me, treat me to the occasional movie, and let me do laundry in their townhouse. However, this system only works if you're all very patient, the riches have generous souls and nobody's keeping score.

Memo to capitalists: Class conflict is a bitch. Love, Marx.

Thanks for linking to this. Though I wish there were some advice on making such friendships work.

@pecan 3.14159265: i think the poster was referring to the convention where you buy the couple a gift roughly equivalent to the assumed cost of the meal at the wedding.

either way, meh. your presence should be enough for the parties involved. i mean, gifts are nice, and weddings are expensive, but i am sure something small, or even just a card, would be appreciated. or, rather, should be.

Anyone here read "Dear Abby"? She's been getting some letters related to this. The person writing either still has money but can't convince the now broke friends to let them pay for a night out, the person writing is broke and wants the other person to stop trying to pay for them, or the person writing is broke and is embarrassed to have to keep turning down invitations out because their friends still want to go to expensive places but aren't offering to pay and they can't afford it.

Um... the article seems contrived and anecdotal. It doesn't "prove" anything and, quite frankly, my experience is the opposite. It doesn't mean that I'm right and the article is wrong, but to position it as "fact" and not opinion piece is a bit of a disservice.

Also, if my friends and I ditch each other because, suddenly, there is a wider income gap... we're probably not great friends. I am currently friends with people all over the social strata, and I'd have to say we're all pretty sensitive to each others' needs and abilities.

Oh, and the whole "how can I talk about my life and little problems when her's are so much worse?" How can anyone talk about their problems when there are starvation and genocide in other parts of the world?

Because we all still have our lives to lead, and there's always someone worse off...

@vladthepaler: A little kindness goes a long way. When I got laid off, we spent time away from home with family and that helped me a lot. And when we got back, we went out to dinner with some friends even though we were both extremely nervous about whether in three months we were wishing we still had that $50...but we wanted a good meal and we were tired of sitting at home, moping about what may or may not happen in the future ....so we had to relax and when we got done with dinner, we found out our friends had paid for us. That was a lot of kindness, and it's nothing new because we take turns paying for our excursions, but it was just really nice that we were able to relax with our good friends, who understood our new situation.

i go to a private art school in new york city. my mom makes less than $45k a year. so i deal with this shit all the time. it's difficult because, uh, i can't drop $40 on drinks at the bar three nights a week. my last roommate was a trust fund baby, and that was difficult but we managed it. although i'll admit i harbor some resentment, just due to the amount of things she didn't have to care about [credit card bills, working, food, etc]

though, truth be told, i wouldn't want to have it any other way. i am distinctly aware of money and financial issues, and as a result i feel much more thrifty and flexible during this recession. my friend lost quite a bit of money in the collapse and had to, for the first time, establish a GASP budget. ahhh, schadenfreude.

@pecan 3.14159265: I think TimeToChange2000 was implying that s/he had to get a rather expensive wedding gift to serve as "payment" for dinner. I've never heard it put that way.

@floraposte: Thanks! Yeah, the classic definition of "paycheck to paycheck" isn't the situation I'm in, but I try to adhere closely to the concept that I don't actually have disposable income and that we need to make choices even more wisely because we don't ever, ever want to feel the kind of dread and anxiety we felt when I was unemployed.

I have taken to cooking a lot, because it is much easier to convince someone to come over for a home-cooked meal than to convince them to let me pick up the tab while eating out.

Just went though with some friends of mine. (A couple with two kids, who were unemployed for 5 months). Here is what I learned:

1) Don't invite them out to dinner. Invite them over to Dinner.

2) Invite yourself ofer to their house for dinner with produce -- as in "Hey, we just picked up some great steaks at Sam's on sale, why don't we come over and grill, we'll provide the beer and steaks, you provide the salad and sides."

3) Don't ask about the job search. If they have information, they'll provide it.

4) Find free events in the area and invite them to come along to a book reading, a lecture, a museum.

5) Help them stay positive.

@floraposte: I didn't mean to throw in a read herring. Class doesn't change with your financial situation, so whatever happens you retain those ties to friends who are more likely than not your class-compatriots. If friendships are enabled on the basis of being able to go to lunch, then yes, you really should be looking for ways to build your friendship. The awkwardness that this can present is real.

But I guess to me it points to the fact that money is always hovering on the edge of social interactions, maybe in ways we're not usually aware of.

And I think it's not just an academic thing; they same upper class people will also say "My husband was a couple years ahead of me in school and we met because of our younger siblings who also went there," when it's obvious both families have been going to Miss Porter's or Andover for generations. I just find being talked down to in this way ridiculous. I know if you lived in Cambridge you were at Harvard. Please.

My parents were diplomats--which despite attendant perks is a middle-class existence--and I see the way people react to that when I say I grew up overseas. At least I have the sense to explain it and joke about it, rather than hide my upbringing. If there's awkwardness about money, the onus is on you to make it right with your friends.

@gaberussell: @katieoh: Screw that! I'm not being cheap, I just can't spend $100+ for every wedding.

@shortcake: I specifically chose a "free" birthday party this year - a bunch of friends meeting to wait in line for free Shakespeare in the Park tickets. I'm supplying coffee and bringing board games. Even if we don't get the tickets, we get to hang out and have fun.

One the plus side, it's really cheap. On the other plus side, it's actually something I would have done for fun anyway, unlike a fancy dinner or party.